A Contrastive Study of Prosody and Lexical Stress Placement in Singapore English and British English

Bibliographic Data

ID10255372
AuthorsLow Ee Ling (Nanyang Technological University, corresponding author), Esther Grabe (University of Cambridge)
Year1999
Volume42
Issue1
Pages39-56
Publication date1999-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage and Speech (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0023-8309 • E-ISSN: 1756-6053
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/00238309990420010201
OpenAlexW2160128050
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited11

It has been claimed that Singapore English and British English differ in stress placement: Singapore English speakers stress the final syllables of polysyllabic words such as flawlessly which are stressed initially in British English. Two considerations lead us to question the cross-varietal difference in stress placement. Firstly, we note that previous comparative studies have investigated stress differences in nuclear position. In this position, however, cues to a boundary and cues to stress may be confounded. Secondly, differences in stress placement have not been suggested by Singapore English speakers, but by British English analysts who may have presupposed comparable acoustic cues to stress in the two varieties. Thus, we hypothesize that it is not the flocation of lexical stress which differs in the two varieties, but the acoustic realization of stress. In the present paper this hypothesis was tested experimentally. Ten Singapore English and ten British English speakers produced polysyllabic words in nuclear, intonation phrase-final, and in non-nuclear, intonation phrase-medial position. Duration and F0 measurements were taken. The results do not support the claimed cross-varietal difference in flexical stress placement. In nuclear position, Singapore English test items are associated with significantly more phrase-final flengthening than British English test items. Additionally, we find a flack of “deprominencing” in F0 in Singapore English, that is, the difference between the nuclear syllable and following unstressed syllables is less clearly marked. In prenuclear position, the cross-varietal differences in duration and F0 disappear

American English · Australian English · British English · Intonation (linguistics · Linguistics · Phrase · Prosody · Stress (linguistics · Syllable · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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